By Jim Ellis — Monday, Dec. 16, 2024
Battleground States
In looking at the final results from November’s presidential, Senate, and congressional races, we see that several states could be on the verge of becoming future battleground entities.
It was clear that seven states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were the battlegrounds that all were monitoring, but six other states are showing signs of potentially falling into such a category in future elections.
Turning to President-Elect Donald Trump’s final vote statistics, he scored in the 70 percentile in two states, Wyoming (71.1 percent), and West Virginia (70.0 percent), while in his two lowest voting entities he posted percentages under 33: Vermont (32.0 percent) and the District of Columbia (6.4 percent).
In 10 states, Trump finished in the 60s. From highest to lowest in this category, those states are: North Dakota, Idaho, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In another dozen voting entities, he finished with percentages between 59.6 (Nebraska) and 54.5 (Alaska).
Looking at the close states, the aforementioned seven wholly recognized battlegrounds returned Trump vote percentages in a tight window between 52.2 percent (Arizona) and 49.7 percent (Wisconsin).
The Trump margins in the six emerging battleground states were not far behind the lowest recognized battleground. The six states falling into this new competitive category are New Hampshire (Trump 47.6 – Kamala Harris 50.4), Minnesota (46.7 – 50.9), New Jersey (46.1 – 52.0), Virginia (46.1 – 51.8), New Mexico (45.8 – 51.8), and Maine (45.5 – 52.2).
Four of the six emerging states hosted Senate races, but none were particularly competitive. Three of the four, Minnesota, Virginia, and New Mexico, featured multi-term incumbents and in only the Land of Enchantment did the Republican challenger, Nella Domenici, have adequate funding with which to compete with her opponent, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D).
New Jersey was the fourth state within this group to host a Senate race and here Rep. Andy Kim (D) easily defeated an underfunded Republican candidate. Therefore, little can be determined from these races.
In all 13 battleground and pre-battleground states, the House races became a bit more definitive. Within these domains, 26 House races could be considered competitive. Of the 26, Democrats were protecting 16 of the districts and Republicans’ 10. The GOP was able to convert three Democratic held seats (PA-7; Rep. Susan Wild losing to Ryan Mackenzie; PA-8; Rep. Matt Cartwright losing to Rob Bresnahan; and MI-7 (Tom Barrett winning the open seat), while Democrats converted no Republican seat.
In the six emerging states we saw no conversions but witnessed some closer than expected finishes. The six entities hosted 10 competitive races. The average spread among those within the competitive category was 5.2 percentage points, and removing the winner with the largest victory margin, Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) and her 13-point spread, the remaining nine congressional victors averaged winning margins of just 4.3 percentage points.
Therefore, the conclusion that can be drawn from the six emerging states is they are ones to watch in the 2026 election, and possibly beyond. Races ending in closer than expected margins suggest we could be seeing fundamental electoral movement in each place, though it will take at least two more election cycles to determine if they’re on the cusp of a longer lasting pattern.
There was no traditionally Republican state that under-performed for the GOP in the 2024 election. The biggest gainer for Trump in comparison to his 2020 performance among these traditional Republican states was Florida where he increased his percentage by 4.9 points. He rose 4.1 points in Texas and 4.0 in Mississippi.
